Why I Use Associated Content

Obviously, I'm signed up and active as an Associated Content contributor, however I'm also registered with Blogger, Triond, Helium, Bukisa and Poetry.com. After some time of attempting to maintain content between more than one site at a time, I've officially given up juggling and decided on a single site - Associated Content.

I've probably belonged to Poetry.com the longest, however I only have a couple pieces published there. I was originally enticed by the possibilities of winning big cash prizes, and I stuck around because of the daily opportunites to win smaller denominations. The novelty eventually wore off as my efforts began to seem quite fruitless. Submitting original works just to be entered into drawings and other contests is nowhere near as satisfying as receiving more immediate rewards for your efforts. Especially when you never win. Of course, there are winners, and I'm in no way trying to dissuade anyone from continuing to publish their poetry there if they choose to do so. Just for me personally, Poetry.com has lost all its luster.

My serial novel originally began its life on Blogger. This was before I knew about the other sites that paid you for writing content. The idea was that using the blogging method would encourage me to continue adding on more chapters to the story, especially if people were to comment on each of the additions. This was to break me of my long-standing habit of starting stories and never finishing them. I have countless notebooks in storage somewhere that have the first several pages filled while the remaining pages are blank. It did work, at first. As I realized that my readership was limited to a couple of people whose blogs I had commented on and no new visitors ever arrived, I became discouraged. Then, as I began to establish a presence on some social networking sites, I discovered (and rediscovered) the online publishing sites that pay you for content and views.

It was then that I decided to give Triond a try with my serial novel. Although I had already rediscovered AC at this point, I chose Triond for the novel because it seemed to be more of a creative site versus the more informative articles that populate much of AC's content. As an online publishing site overall, I give it a thumbs up. Because there are no upfront payments, your works are usually published within hours of submission. People can read your content and leave a comment as well click the "I Like" icon to let you know you're writing something interesting. Triond's Dashboard allows you to see at a glance what content has been getting recent views, your pageview trends in a chart and your Triond friends' newest content. There were only two things that I found troublesome. One was the length of time that content pages took to load. That is, just reading other people's articles or submissions took time because the site seems to be connected with Adobe Reader in some fashion. If I had Adobe Acrobat 6 open when I opened Triond articles, the pages would always popup an "Adobe Reader is incompatible" type of message before finally loading completely. Whatever background relationship was going on it caused pages to take time to load, plus it seemed to drag on computer resources quite a bit. The other thing is the restrictions on type of content. I ran into a snafu on a chapter in my novel where there is quite a bit of violence and blood. Triond told me I could not publish that chapter as it was. (I have yet to see if AC will accept it. It's coming up in the next couple of parts though, so we'll find out soon enough.) Other than those two things, Triond is a good site. The reason I chose to leave it, is because I could not find enough time to read my Triond buddies' articles as well as my AC friends' articles. Therefore, my Triond readership was very very low. In the several months that I posted my story parts to Triond I only earned 16 cents in pageviews. I can get that in a single day on AC!

When I signed up for Helium and Bukisa I skimmed through their Terms and Conditions. Everything seemed completely legit, but the big drawback was that they appeared to be like Triond, income based on pageviews. Since I already was failing at that with Triond, I was loath to publish anything to these sites.

This then leaves me and my content, including my ongoing serial novel, here with Associated Content. I'm very pleased with the results. In the 10 days that I've had the first chapter of my novel posted here at AC, I've had at least double the pageviews I had on Triond (thank you my AC fans!), which means I've already earned more than what I had in the months on Triond. The readership as well as the earnings here at AC have done alot to greatly convince me that it was a good choice to bring my creative writings to Associated Content. I had been a bit leary about it before now as I was a little concerned about the licensing. However, since even on "Display Only" my pageviews are surpassing my expectations, those qualms have been quieted.

Thank you Associated Content, and my readers here! :-)